


The Witchress and The Boy in the Tower

by whentheautumnmoonisbright



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Adultery, Archery, Child Death, Domestic Violence, Execution by Burning, F/F, F/M, Hemophilia, Jaskier has Fae Blood, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Meeting the Parents, No Beta: We Fall Like Cintra, Non Consensual touching, Winter At Kaer Morhen, bastards, constant editing, cursing, fairytale references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25802122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whentheautumnmoonisbright/pseuds/whentheautumnmoonisbright
Summary: “I want you to come to the keep with me,” Ciri whispered into the warm night air between them, whilst the late fall winds howled outside.They were wrapped tightly around one another, her fingers lightly tugging on his curls, his lithe legs hooked around her hips, and her head resting on the widest part of his soft chest as it rose and fell.“To Kaer Morhen?”(In which, on her witchering travels around The Continent, Ciri finds her own version of Jaskier and brings him home for the winter).
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/ Æthelred | Count de Stael, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Countess de Stael, Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 15
Kudos: 69





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Also, as for calling Ciri a 'witchress' instead of a 'witcheress', I prefer the former due to the word 'huntress', but I suppose you could spell it any way you like. :)
> 
> Enjoy! :)

  
_Born a winter's night cold and clear,_   
_he didst not shed a single tear,_   
_a mother and a cuckold blessed,_   
_as among seven he doth not rest,_   
_a son with affliction none can heal,_   
_a secret his blood doth still conceal._

Æthelred, Count de Stael, or just Red, did not fall head over heels in love with Cirilla right after she rescued him _(from the highest room, in the tallest tower, in a dark and enchanted glen),_ oh no…

No, he waited until the thirteenth time she saved his life, before vowing himself to forever be in her service.

Well, he actually offered her The Law of Surprise first.

That didn't go over well.

He was more than surprised, when her explosive punch to his stomach didn't illicit any bloody vomit on his part.

His debt paid by lifelong service was all he could manage to wheeze out before her second blow fell.

That service culminated in him desperately clinging to the back of her obsidian mare, screaming as she beheaded two more monsters in front of him, and being wooed by the surprisingly romantic scent of monster guts and sweat in the air.

On that thirteenth occasion, she’d deposited him onto the back of her temperamental mare, Kelpie, with a huff, plucking him out of a mossy tree in the middle of a swamp. The pond below him was teeming with the mob of angry drowners that he’d been provoking for hours on end. 

_Well, how else was a bastard supposed to find some mortal peril, worthy of a witchress, in the safest hamlet on The Continent?_

He had resorted to aggressively poking the drowners with a long stick and keening at the top of his lungs to annoy them, as it was hard to be afraid of the slow, green, amphibious beings.

It was a tad more perilous if they were angry though.

_(A little romp through a meadow on uneven soil would have put him in the same level of peril. But drowners were the far more interesting option)._

At least it was enough peril to garner the attention of his favorite passing witchress, who didn't hesitate to save him yet again. 

He'd grinned at her as she approached and even waved jauntily, despite being in —ahem— _mortal peril,_ “Ah, my brave and daring champion! You’ve come to save me at long last!” He'd sat up on his mossy branch and wiggled his bum over into the best spot for her to scoop him up. “Thank goodness, the stench up here was getting absolutely lethal.”

Ciri had just rolled her eyes at him, with her token smirk, as he'd leapt into her arms with glee and they rode away, all while roughly shoving strands of her — _iridescent, glowing, beautiful_ — white-gold hair away from her face. “It was just a couple of drowners, Red. Nothing ballad worthy... But you shouldn’t have been in the forest in the first place, it's dangerous.”

Ah, yes, those were the early days.

Before she realized that he would happily follow her to the ends of The Continent and into any battle, with only mild complaining and a bit of high-pitched screaming.

“Of course, my lionheart! It was an awful, inconsiderate thing to do, and so _irresponsible_ of me.” The end of his curly black ponytail was covered in dried drowner blood and he'd taken a moment, whilst thrusting unbearable levels of saccharine sweetness into his words, to pick it clean. “For alas, I am little more than a weak and sickly flower destined to spend the rest of my very short life locked up in a tower for my own fucking _protection.”_

He’d been there, done that, and practically thrown himself out of the window onto the first person who dared to venture close enough.

"I didn't mean it like that." She had insisted, refusing to look at him, "You know how I meant it."

He did.

"I know. But Cirilla, be reasonable." His tone was gentle but curt. "Not to be frank, dear, but I’d rather die with you on the Path, than on a bed of gossamer sheets when a nick from a quill has me bleed to death." He'd scowled as he leaned closer. "I don't want to go out like some sort of sonnet-soppy pansy." He'd pressed even closer. "...I only want to be with you, and to go where destiny takes us."

His lips had been velvet-soft and featherlight as they brushed chastely against her pale cheek, giving her ample opportunity to reject him or push him away. 

She never did. 

He felt her stiffen beneath his fingertips instead, beneath her tunic and armor.

It was then that he knew how wrong he had been.

True love was real after all.

He, the bastard son of a bard and an unfaithful countess, had fallen in love with his rescuer, a witchress.

It was a sorry fulfillment of those fairytales he’d been told as a child, about magic and true love, whilst the Count de Stael raged and struck his mother at the same time.

It was hard to believe in any sort of love back then.

In fact, the only love that Red had always managed to find some belief in, was that between a mother and her child.

_Oh, how he had loved her..._

He'd spread her ashes amid the graves of the babes, his brothers, who hadn’t been long for the world.

It was the last good thing he’d been able to do before he was locked away in his tower. 

_For his protection,_ the Count had said.

How pretty a gilded lie could be...

Red had once been certain that he would die alone in that tower, until he was saved by a brave and daring witchress of course.

She who rescued him with no thought of payment or reward, simply out of her own kindness, and then promptly killed a cockatrice and a wyvern in the same strike by her silver sword as they fled. He was besotted from the first drop of spilled monster blood. 

“Your life won't be short either,” Ciri had growled, a dangerous thing to most. But Red had merely laid his head upon her pale shoulder, for he knew her muscles there were broad and strong enough to hold them both. “I won’t let it be.” 

_I won’t let you die young._

_You shan't leave me like that, Red._

She never said those words out loud.

She never needed to.

“Oh, my silly witchress,” Red had only smiled with a touch of sadness, resting his cheek upon the rough leather of the sword strap she wore. “I doubt even you could prevent that.” 

No one lived once destiny decided to kill them. 

Red had once watched his own mother burn on a pyre, choking on smoke and screaming for absolution, for a crime that her cuckolded husband would not abide. That same cruel man had forced Red to watch as his own mother’s face melted away from her skull.

He was Leofwin, Count de Stael, and he would never know that Red wasn’t his own.

Thankfully, through some minuscule amount of short-sightedness, he had been assured that his potent seed had obviously resulted in the only living child from his second wife's womb.

A boy, who did not share his features in the slightest. 

Red's mother was burnt alive and tortured for her crimes of adultery, at least according to what the Count claimed, when in reality it was for the seven graves. For the seven tiny infants who hadn’t been long for the world. For the seven deaths that were blamed on her, and for the misplaced guilt she carried all of her days. 

Red had always assumed that he would join her one day, that he would join his brothers in the soil, as _bleeders_ never lived long enough to bear children of their own.

In fact, bleeders weren't supposed to live out of early childhood at all.

However, even with all his strange luck, Red had never dreamt himself the love of a witchress.

Perhaps destiny was not such a cruel bitch, after all.

Ciri’s eyes were as sharp as a silver blade cutting through flesh and bone, as they met his, “I can and I will.”

  
-X-

  
Red, despite his musical education, only sang under two conditions. 

The first was when they were in dire need of coin, usually whilst traversing some backwater hamlet in the midst of nowhere, thankfully facing folk that wouldn’t know true bardic talent unless it bit them on the ass. 

The second was when Ciri was ill or injured, rare as though the latter was. 

Red would oft tend to her wounds after battles hard-won, insisting that he be the one do it, as Ciri’s bandaging and stitching skills left quite a lot to be desired.

Thankfully, if Red's malady had taught him anything then it was how to tend to wounds. 

She would lay her head upon his shoulder, her sweaty face tucked into his neck to hear him croon to her and only her: _“For there ne'r was a warrior, as hardy as she, mine roaring lioness who lies beneath this willow tree…”_

His voice was _unusual_ to say the least, even when he played his mandolin alongside it. 

Despite a brief foray at Oxenfurt when he was a young lad, Red knew that he would never be a proper bard. 

In true unfortunate fashion, he had managed to inherit a gift —or rather, _a burden_ — from each of his parents.

Due to his mother’s blood, he was a born a bleeder, which was difficult enough to contend with.

But due to his sire’s vocal talent, he was also born with a voice that caused him far more trouble than it was worth. His singing voice, much like his speaking voice, was light and airy, as sweet as a cup of warmed chocolate on a cold day, and it often got him mistaken for being a woman. His rather outlandish clothing, round, childish features, and long black curls did little to assuage that assumption either. And he didn’t always mind it. He had always rather enjoyed the way he looked.

What he did mind was that his voice, and his appearance for that matter, had put Ciri in danger more than once. His features and her hot temper did not make for an easy resolution to any of such situations, the very opposite in fact.

As angry men and women, no matter the race, monsters and heroes alike, loved _pretty things._

Red, as loathe as he was to admit it, was a _pretty thing_ —his face, his soft and small form, and his voice— all made him a seemly prize to be coveted and kept, to be _owned._

A delicate little songbird in a cage who couldn't escape. A prize that could be bruised black and blue at a single hand's gentle touch.

It had gotten him into quite a few tough situations over the years, but nothing that he couldn’t free himself from on his own.

The trouble with being a witcher’s darling though, meant that any stray hand was often answered by a blade.

A blow that often ended in a skirmish over his bloody _virtue_ of all things. A stupidity, considering that he'd had precious little to begin with.

It was pure ridiculousness, and he oft-told her such whilst stringing up her wounds with catgut. 

“Cirilla, you absolutely cannot do this anymore.” His fingers were slick with her blood. “I will not lose you at the hand of some petty noble’s blade, defending my honor or not.”

Her eyes were fiery when she flipped around to glare at him. “That fucker touched your hair. He deserved what he got.” 

Red merely pressed his lips into a taut line, quietly seething as he finished bandaging her cuts, then pressed a little kiss to the nearest covered wound. “It's not the first time, Cirilla. Nor am I a child to be coddled.” 

At her affronted look, he added, “I know it’s not alright to be treated so crassly, love. But I don’t want you getting hurt while trying to protect me either. I can protect myself.”

“Red…” She said softly, and if he didn’t know better he would have said it was a whimper. "He would have— he could have...”

“But he didn't. You saved me." He gently cupped her chin in one hand and sunk to his knees. "Look at me _,_ Cirilla.” 

He picked up one of her silver blades and used it to gently nick the tangled hair-tie at the end of his braided twist, holding it all together. 

His midnight-black curls tumbled free down his shoulders and he exposed his battered arms. They were far from lovely, littered with burn scars from cauterizations long past and silver stretch-marks from where his biceps had filled out before the rest of him. He was ill, scarred and tired, far from a pretty thing as he knelt before her.

But what she saw was real.

“I choose you.” He whispered, unbuttoning his doublet and letting his tunic join it on the floor.

The feeling of baring himself to her was terrifying, but at the same time, it wasn't, because he trusted her with everything. “I give myself to you completely. I choose you and I always will.”

She never broke eye contact with him and she never looked away. Instead, she slid the tattered remains of her own shirt from her shoulders, her shorn white-gold hair fluttering around the base of her throat. He wanted nothing more than to kiss her there, but he waited silently for her permission first. She was still keyed up from the earlier scuffle, her heart still aflutter and her body taut with adrenaline.

“I choose you too, Red.” Her voice was small and fragile, as delicate as a dove’s wing, as if she were afraid of his reaction. “I think I love you."

He, who already loved her more than anything, reached out to stroke her cheek, his fingers hovering inches away for her consent.

She leaned into the touch. 

“I haven’t chosen much in my life.” Her voice was soft.

He knew that part of the story already but said nothing as she spoke, giving her time to collect her thoughts.

“I’m a Child Surprise born with Elder Blood…" Her top teeth worried her bottom lip. "My destiny was written in the stars long before I was even born.”

Red had once thought he knew what it meant to be beholden to destiny, but Cirilla had never been given a choice about _anything_ in her own life. It was sickening, and his heart ached for her.

“But you, Red,” She leaned forwards, her hot breath tickling his ear. “Destiny had no part in this, in _us."_ Her smile was as bright as the summer sun when she looked at him. "I can and will _always_ choose you, because I love you.”

That was the last thing he’d ever expected to hear in his life from anyone. 

But, as he was learning, anything was possible when one learned to love. 

  
-X-

  
“I want you to come to the keep with me,” Ciri whispered into the warm night air between them, whilst the late fall winds howled outside. 

They were wrapped tightly around one another, her fingers lightly tugging on his curls, his lithe legs hooked around her hips, and her head resting on the widest part of his soft freckled chest as it rose and fell. 

“To Kaer Morhen?”

He’d heard all her stories, of her two mothers and two fathers, of her grandfather and her uncles, of her little destiny-wrought family coming together to raise her, and how she would visit them every winter without fail. He knew all the stories she was willing to tell and he knew why she wanted him there, but still, Red was torn. He knew the pain of being without her. He hadn’t been with her for the last two years’ winters, and they had been the worst in his waking memory.

Apparently, once love had been found, it was remarkably difficult trying to live without it once more. 

She nodded into him and he sighed, in an ideal world he would have agreed without contest. 

“Why?” He probed, gently.

And when she didn’t answer, he pressed on. “Do you think my meeting them will change anything?”

It wouldn't.

He didn't have to be a mage to know that bit of portents.

He would always be a sickly human to them, no matter the guise he wore. They were her parents, her family, and they would want the best for her.

Red wasn't that.

They would see him as a heartbreak for Cirilla, present or future, nothing more and nothing less. 

He expected that, understood it, but he wasn't sure that she did.

“I want them to meet you and to know you,” She hummed, one calloused palm resting on the gentle curve of his lower belly. “Because I love you.”

And that was reason enough, he supposed, for him to agree.

  
-X-

  
Leofwin, Count de Stael, had three children with his first wife, three beautiful daughters: Aethelu, Vena, and Leofa.

They were the lights of his life.

When his darling Ada perished due to a bout of lung fever in Leofa's third year, he took a second wife and was soon expecting a fourth child, a boy they called James.

But tragedy struck soon after his birth and their son bled from the navel for nearly a week, a bleeding that no healer or cunning woman could abate. He died shortly thereafter and they mourned for him strongly. 

His fifth child was another boy, a tiny red-haired slip of a thing they called Aden, and he was their pride and joy for a lovely _(if short)_ two years. His only quirk was a predilection for strange, massive bruises that always marred his alabaster skin, bruises that grew swollen and painful as the days passed.

Aden died shortly after his second birthday, when a small tumble in the gardens led to a horrible swelling in his hip and a fever that tore through his tiny body like a wildfire. He joined his brother in the grave and the Count just couldn’t understand his poor luck. 

One son came and then another, but neither reached an age where they could be considered a silent birth. 

The eighth babe’s name was Teodor and he didn't even last a week. His head had been bruised when exiting his mother's body during delivery. He bled and bled and bled, but he never cried and he never woke from his birthing sleep.

The Count was devastated. 

By then, everyone on their lands knew of their plight: the Count and Countess de Stael with their vast empire, beautiful daughters, and dead infant sons. 

Despite the pressure of the courts, the Leofwin vowed never to try again at his coveted healthy son, assuming that they were simply cursed. Not knowing of his wife’s tainted genetic code, or her blood's hereditary malady.

But of course, the moment they had given up on having any more children, the Countess fell pregnant once more. 

For months and months, they prayed for the child to born a living girl, as her belly swelled to mammoth proportions. Instead, they received beautiful twin boys, identical with cornsilk hair and crystalline blue eyes. 

They both bled from the navel, in the same endless way that James once had. 

The sight was heartrending. 

Lewin and Adewin were buried in the sixth and seventh tiny graves on their estate, and the Count had no more grief left to spare. Guilt consumed him for it. 

Their last boy was another unannounced gift and the Countess went into confinement with her ladies until his birth, assuming yet another loss, only to surprise them all with a living child by the end of it.

He was born on the first clear day in a long and cruel winter, the promise of a coming spring. 

The Countess named him Æthelred for _wisdom_.

She told her husband later that their youngest: _came into the world with old eyes_.

A screaming son with a round face and a button nose, his beautiful black ringlets turned stark against his porcelain skin.

He hadn’t resembled his siblings in the slightest, neither those living nor dead. But the Count didn't mind it. He was happy every time the child drew a breath.

A worry coupled with the fact that Æthelred was just as delicate as his brothers had once been, a bleeder still. But he was a stubborn little thing despite it. 

His joints swelled with blood as he walked, and he would cry with the agony of it. But in the same vein of experience, he would sit obediently and sniffle as strips of long, wide, cloth bandages were wrapped and tightened around the swellings to push the blood back into his body. 

He would sit still and silent as each cut and scrape was brutally cauterized by pressing a boiling metal knife to his fragile weeping skin. The baby and then the boy, would bear the pain dutifully, and even learned how to treat himself over time. He would always carry a cauterizing knife on his hip, the metal strong from overworking.

Leofwin watched, as the boy he had written off only grew older and stronger. 

The years passed rapidly for them, and the Count did all he could to look after Æthelred, once it became apparent that his only living son wasn't going anywhere. 

He confined the child to his nursery, with softened corners and plush furs to ease his falls. Then had the servants cart him around in a wicker-back chair, even when he was old and well enough to walk of his own power. 

Alas, despite it all, Æthelred still didn't escape the pain and suffering that so often afflicted bleeders throughout their short lives. 

Whilst learning to read and write, he got the silver tip of a quill stuck in the roof of his mouth. 

In order to stop the bleeding, a court mage had used a paintbrush dipped in acid to burn the wound shut, convinced that a conservative treatment would instill a lasting lesson against foolhardiness in the boy. 

Leofwin regretted it as soon as he'd agreed.

It was so painful that Æthelred fainted part of the way through, and needed days in bed to recover his strength. 

But once again, he was a particularly precocious and imaginative boy and sprang back rather quickly.

He would coax his sisters into playing with him in his bedroom prison, the precursor to the tower of his teen years, and for a moment he was an ordinary child instead of a porcelain doll. 

He was mischievous, always playing, and spent his free time day-dreaming of a different life, rather than the one he was born to lead. 

That boy grew into a scorned teenager and then into a brilliant man, with a storm of black curls and delicate blue eyes. 

That boy, who was locked up in a tower for his own safe-keeping after his mother's execution, and trapped there for more than half a decade.

  
-X-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy :)

_“Raised was he 'i a corset of halls and doors,_   
_loved only when on all fours,_   
_child with eyes of yew and bow of bone,_   
_ne'r shall he return home.”_

Red’s mother had insisted upon him learning archery as a child, both despite his malady and perhaps, because of it. 

She herself had grown up as the unwanted middle child of fourteen hungry mouths, born to a peasant farming family on the outskirts of the de Stael lands. Her older brothers had followed in the footsteps of their late father and died in the heat of battle, whilst her older sisters ended up in service to the local nobility, in order to send back what little money they could to keep the family afloat. Their own mother was useless when lost in her grief, so it was Red’s mother who provided for her younger siblings and tended to the farm from dawn ’til dusk, each day of her early life. 

Her name was Lucinda. 

She was a huntress, with her recurve bow resting upon her breast as she darted through the trees, moving in the shadows as if she could command them. 

She taught Red the same skill-set, certain that it would save his life one day.

She coaxed his tiny fingers around the bow’s riser and positioned it in his bruised little arms, when he was only three. It was their secret and they could only practice when night turned into the early morning. Even with the training’s strain on his body, she tended to him the best she could, pressing an adjustable little brace onto his drawstring hand, preventing him from tearing open his skin time and time again. Her eyes would fill with tears as she kissed the bruises that the bow caused him, assuring him that it was all for the best. 

He would need to protect himself one day, when she couldn’t anymore. 

She knew, even then, that her marriage would end in death. 

When Red was still a curious and easily distracted child, she’d put a little bump into the bowstring to teach him where to make contact with his lips at his draw. 

“So you hit your target every time, poppet.” 

The day after she lost her life on the pyre, Red was gathering his things for his exodus into the tower, and stumbled, by chance, across the tiny recurve bow of his childhood. It had been tucked between his bed and the wall, forgotten as he grew older, and it felt almost too small in his arms now. 

Almost. 

He notched the bow on instinct, pointing it out the open window and aiming directly for a familiar figure near the head of the lush green gardens, his golden circlet denoting his position as head of house. Red aimed for the de Stael crest sewn upon his large chest, right abouts his icy heart. 

The boy aimed for a kill shot, tugging the string to his lips in the same way that she used to kiss him and hold him when he cried.

But in the end, he couldn’t do it. 

He was never his father’s son, in more ways than one. 

Red let the string release into nothingness, as the bow clattered to the floorboards. 

It snapped at the dry shot, and the little stone his mother had once sewn there, rolled away, never to be seen again. 

His ensuing sobs were wracked with grief, and they weren’t for a runaway marble either. 

-X-

There was blood in the snow. 

A violent winter was fast approaching them, but they were still on the mountain’s steep trail, hiking through the scant flurries that fell around them, and then only mounting Kelpie as the terrain got rougher. 

Red had no qualms with holding onto Cirilla as they picked up speed, trying to reach the keep before the incoming snowstorm hit. He could see it growing in the distance, a mass of thick and angry gray-black clouds against the ashen sky. He would lean into her warmth, as he always had, and gently rub circles into her left shoulder, his breath fogging up the air between them before it faded away into nothingness. What he did take issue with however, was the reckless and daring way that his lover would turn Kelpie around and go up the trails that only grew smaller and thinner as they rose. 

Heights were far from Red’s favorite thing in the world, so he spent the majority of his time with his face buried in Cirilla’s cloak or pointedly staring at the remaining ground below Kelpie’s hooves, although the latter tended to make him more nauseous than the former. 

That was why he was already looking at the ground and spotted the trail of blood first, as their path opened up into a wide expanse of forest and a surprisingly large clearing. 

“Ciri,” He reached forwards to tug on the reins and coax Kelpie to a stop. She let him. “There’s blood in the snow, and it looks fresh.”

When she didn’t say anything, merely inclining her head to look herself, he added. “I thought no one else went this way?” 

She’d told him that while the trail they took was rougher and steeper, it was faster. Unfortunately, there was only space for a single horse and its rider, so that the older witchers, who brought carts along, would have to use another path. There was no village as high as they were on the mountain and no possible need for anyone to travel so far in the winter. There should have been no one on the path, but them.

She voiced the words that they both already knew: “They don’t.” 

Ciri swung herself out of the saddle with ease, her tanned hide boots meeting the snow with a muted crunch. 

Both of them listened intently for any stray sound around them, hidden beneath the blow of the wind. When they heard nothing, she touched Red’s ankle for a moment, before quietly unsheathing her long silver sword.

Red's heart dropped to his knees.

He knew his lover inside and out, and he knew _that look._ That look she wore when she about to rush off and do something stupid.

Now, it seemed as if she was about to race after the little rivers of blood that grew thicker and darker, the farther they rode into the clearing. 

“Cirilla!” He demanded, moving to climb out of the saddle himself. “Don’t you dare.”

But she stopped him with a calloused hand on his knee. “No, Red. You need to go, I’ll take care of this." Her fingers were tight around her sword. "Go to the keep, it’s only a mile or two farther up.” His darling waved her hand as if to gesture at the trail they’d just been following. “Stay on the path.”

He balked at her, his hood falling to expose a few midnight curls stuck to his forehead with sweat and rosy cheeks bitten red from the wind. “Have you gone soft in the head, my darling? Taken a little tumble?” His voice was firm and incredulous as he spoke. “I’m not leaving you here alone!” 

She nodded and turned her back, “Yes, you are. Any monster foolhardy enough to come close to a witcher’s keep, well… I might just need some help.” 

That was a half-lie, they both knew it.

From her posture, Red knew that she was about to embark on the sort of monster hunt that he wouldn’t usually attend, simply because he knew how much Cirilla worried when he was put in danger, even though she’d learned not to voice it for his sake. But fuck that. They were in the direct path of a vicious looking snowstorm on an unknown trail, high up in the Blue Mountains. She was not going _alone._

“Exactly why I’m not leaving you by yourself in the fucking wilderness with _just your sword!”_

Then he realized what she wasn't saying, that it wasn’t his help she needed. 

He would only get in her way. 

She needed him to go for proper reinforcements.

But she wouldn't tell him so, for the same reason he never called her _princess_ or _beautiful_ as if it was the sole thing she was.

Ciri pursed her lips and rolled her eyes though, tugging a satchel of water and rations off Kelpie’s flank and filling it with two more impractical daggers, before gesturing towards it, as if to say: _“Better now, dear?”_

_No, it really wasn’t._

His glare must have told her that much. 

_“Cirilla.”_

Red moved to swing off of Kelpie yet again, now out of sheer stubbornness, but she had the gall to slap the mare’s flank instead. A shuddering blow that was strong enough to send the beast bolting, throwing Red back into the saddle hard enough to bruise his thighs. He yelped and held on for dear life. 

“Cirilla!” He shrieked and narrowed his teary eyes with venom. “You’d better not fucking _die_ out there, or I swear to Melitele I’ll never lay with you again! _Ever!”_

The last thing he heard was her laughing, as he frantically grabbed onto Kelpie’s reins to keep them from toppling over the edge of an even thinner mountain pass. He blanched at the sight and moaned as they continued their ascent, only mildly surprised to find more droplets of blood on that path as well, left like breadcrumbs to follow in an old storybook. Although not as plentiful as those in the clearing below, they were still concerning nevertheless, and he realized that the farther they trod, the redder the trail grew. The fresher the blood was. 

But he pressed forwards regardless, for he may not have been able to help Cirilla himself, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to bring someone back for her, whether she needed it or not.

The sound of snow crunching beneath Kelpie's hooves was enough to send fear racing down his spine, but he ignored it for the sake of time.

He hadn’t been allowed to leave the bounds of the estate as a boy, and certainly not to go outside whilst it snowed. The snow was a perfect avenue for him to be ill in bed for days or worse, after a slight tumble. So it had been forbidden to him, as most things were, and even the sound of snow crunching beneath him was enough to send shivers down his limbs, shivers that weren't from the cold. 

He, whilst burrowing as deeply as he could into his own cloak, probably would have ridden past the two forms beside the trail, being never the wiser. Or, at least, he would have _if_ the path hadn’t opened up into a smaller clutch of trees and snow piles, and if they hadn’t left another horse in his way. 

The tawny mare stood unbound, but stayed waiting and dutifully shielding her owners from the falling snow. 

The two forms, one larger and one smaller, were bent in the blood-dappled snow. The smaller of the two dug frantically in a pack on the horse’s side, and the larger sat in a red puddle of his own making. But by his shouts of frustration, the slighter man wasn’t finding the medical supplies he needed.

Clearly, they were close and very much in trouble. 

A guilty hand twisted in Red’s gut and he picked up the pace. 

They were speaking to one another, but he couldn’t make it out what they were saying from so far away, instead, he encouraged Kelpie into an even faster trot and called out against the snow and wind, mild as though both still were. 

“Hello!? Do you need any help? How badly are you hurt?”

They both looked up as he neared them, but didn't answer the questions. 

Once he realized that the blood was oozing at a much slower rate than he thought, from the larger of the two men, he slid from Kelpie’s back, taking a moment to sling his bow and his quiver across his back, before jogged the rest of the way towards them. All while being careful not to trip on the ice, and trusting that Ciri’s loyal mare would follow in his wake. 

The gentle nicker and rustle of his hair once he'd stopped, were enough to assure him that she had. 

Red dropped to rest on his thigh as he reached the duo, digging around in his pack at the same time. “Here, I have bandages, catgut, and silk for the wound in your side.” He proffered them with a little wan smile, not getting any closer than he had to. 

_Be wary of anyone you meet on the path and never get close enough for them to harm you,_ Cirilla had told him, time and time again.

And just as before, he disregarded it.

He moved close enough to study the men: the slighter of the two had his hood pulled high against the wind, as he held pressure on the larger man’s deepest wounds so Red was unable to see his face. 

But the larger man’s hood had fallen, to reveal his snow-white hair and angry scowl, along with the hint of a silver medallion around his neck. 

Red felt his heart buoyed with relief, _thank goodness, he’d found help even closer than the keep._

But before he could say anything...

“Go back down the mountain, boy.” The large man who could only be _Geralt of Rivia_ growled, once Red was within proper spitting distance of him. “This path isn’t meant for any more fucking travelers.”

Red only blinked, trying to process, and his mouth ran away without him yet again. “Well, you’re just a stroppy bundle of sunflowers, now aren’t you?” 

The smaller man snorted and took the supplies with what Red hoped was a smile, whilst the witcher’s expression only got dourer by the minute. “ _Go,_ boy, before I make you.”

Red fought the urge to roll his eyes.

As if the growling of an ordinary witcher was enough to scare off _Red._

To be perfectly honest, Ciri’s glares were far more legendary and her gruff tone more adept at striking fear into Red’s heart by far. 

“Geralt, he’s only being kind.” The other man corrected, and given his proximity to and fondness for _The White Wolf_ himself, Red assumed that he must be the bard Jaskier. The famous bard educated at Oxenfurt, and the reason why there were so many tawdry songs about witchers in the taverns he and Ciri passed through. Much of Red's time in Oxenfurt had been spent hearing stories about the bard's exploits. He was also the second father in the parenting quartet that had raised his beloved from childhood. So Red schooled his features and opened his mouth to be nice.

Then the man turned to him, his voice lilting with a high and gentle tone, “But he’s right, this path is dangerous and the closest village is pretty far down the mountain. Not a great short-cut to wherever you're going, I'm afraid.”

Red couldn’t stop staring. 

Whatever witty retort that was about to emerge from his lips was lost to the winds, as he regaled the man in front of him in complete and utter shock. Those enormous blue eyes, that soft brown hair and button nose, that gentle smile. 

He _knew_ that face. 

His mother had kept a locket beneath her chemise, a little iron thing of no consequence, but inside had been a tiny portrait and a lock of hair. Neither of which had belonged to _Jaskier the Bard_. So _who_ was...?

“Jul—?” 

A hand slammed down over his mouth with far more force than was necessary, _(Red had to blink back tears from his eyes and count his teeth with his tongue),_ as the witcher stood and dragged both Red and his bard as far back as they could go, resting against the cover of the trees. 

If Red hadn't been so focused on the slight man in front of him, then he probably would have noticed the way that Geralt’s ears had pricked up, listening for something that the other two couldn’t hear.

“Ghoul.” The large man grunted, holding firm to them both, even as Red struggled and squirmed. “Fucking wyvern, fucking travelers..."

 _Wyvern?_ Was that what Cirilla was hunting? 

He fought even harder against the hand that held him. 

He needed to get to her or to the keep, he didn't care about any damn ghouls, or false bards with pretty faces and eyes that lied to him with every kindness.

“Stop fighting him.” The other man whispered, the man with the face of Julian Alfred Pankratz. “Geralt was hunting a wyvern that killed a family traveling the path, he took care of it, but something must have followed the smell of the blood.” 

“Not something,” Geralt grunted again, “A ghoul, and _be quiet.”_

Red was going do absolutely no such thing, and he spent each spare moment debating the merits of licking a witcher’s hand or if it would even free him at all. His fingers reached up to squeeze the man’s wrist instead, a discomfort that was probably as trivial to him as being bitten by a small bug, but it was enough to get Red released and tossed into the chest of the other man. 

“ _Go,_ both of you!” The witcher unsheathed his silver sword and faced the rumbling ground with a scowl. “Jask, get him anywhere else!”

The ground beneath them was rocking, almost as though it was being peeled up, as a pair of red-black hands reached up to drag Geralt to the ground. “Fuck!”

Jaskier the bard, _(the man with a face he most certainly should not have),_ pulled Red across the snow at the same time. “Get away, get away...” The bard was mumbling to himself.

 _“Move faster!”_ That last shout was directed at Red. 

But there was no possible way he could move faster without hurting himself in the process, as one pathetic slip could spell his end, and wasn't that a silly way to perish?

His caution was a boon as it turned out, as the next one of those creatures popped up right in front of them, exactly where the bard would have been standing if they were a bit quicker. 

Red had his bow in his hands within the instant, and an arrow notched just before the thing could spring. He didn’t know where to aim, as a ghoul wasn't human and didn't have human organs to victimize. But just as he was about to shoot, Ciri’s voice came to him, washing over him with a gentle calming lilt. 

_It’s a necrophage, it’s poisonous, vulnerable to silver, fire, and bright lights._

Well, he certainly didn’t have the coin for silver-tipped arrows, but _bright light…_

He could do that.

Red shot the thing in the leg, leaving it to scream and turn to him instead of a quickly tiring Geralt, who seemed to be the biggest threat, with his silver sword and black eyes. But the blood loss from his wounds would only make him slower and those things were supposed to be fast. He needed a distraction to have the greatest chance of getting them all. 

Red started running.

If there was anything that he was exceptionally good at, it was being annoying. 

He ripped the dagger and hilt off of his belt and flung it at Jaskier in one fell swoop, aiming as best as he could. “Go help him!”

At the same time, the youth danced out into the white snow like an angry little pixie, releasing arrows as he went. 

“Oh come here, you ugly beasts, _come get me!”_ Draw. Aim. Release. “I’m soft and chewy.” Draw. Aim. Release. “My meat must be absolutely divine.” Draw. Aim. Release. “Tender and bloody too!” Draw. Aim. Release. Draw. Aim. Release. 

Draw. Aim. Release.

Draw. Aim.

_Oh._

His string snapped dry as he hit the snow with a crunch.

That was all it took before the thing was upon him.

Red never got to see Geralt's absolutely amazing strike of three ghouls’ heads off in a row, or see the bard hold his own against them with only Red’s cauterizing knife to defend himself.

He was too busy screaming. 

_Cirilla was right,_ he thought, as he looked as the purple-red gouge on his arm, a festering wound that would undoubtedly be his end, _they were most definitely poisonous._

In his last few moments of clarity, he wondered what would take him first, the poison or the blood loss, as his eyes fluttered shut and his whole world was set aflame. 

-X-


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many princess references can I add to this story? The world may never know...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, sorry for dipping out there guys, it's been a rough couple of months. :) 
> 
> On the bright side, I'm officially a degreed Biologist so that's cool. 
> 
> :)
> 
> (Also sorry if the style is a bit choppy, I've been writing nothing but academic papers the last few months).

_“Cometh didst she 'i the dead of night_   
_witchress borne and bred to the fight_   
_bastard turned his brow to the air,_   
_regaling all he should'st not dare.”_

  
He was on fire. 

Now the sane and reasonable part of his mind —the chastising bit that sounded quite like Cirilla— ferociously reminded him that he was lying in a snowdrift, and that it was the necrophage poison coursing through his veins that acted as the starter, scorching everything in its path, and not a hastily erected wooden pyre of flames. But the other part of his mind, the part that had once watched his mother’s face bubble and melt away from her bones like candle wax, had a slight difference of opinion, and when he closed his aching eyes, he was swallowed up by an identical pyre. 

He could no longer vocalize his screams, but they reverberated inside of his mind as he watched his own flesh melt away from his bones.

He scarcely felt the hands that lifted him up, with no sense of his delicacy or the frailty of his tissues, or those that wrapped a piece of cloth about his wound, tightening it brutally. 

He couldn’t feel the blood loss through the flames, but he knew it would be great. 

His blood would come no faster than others in theory, but it would tarry long and would oft never stop in its massive flow, until he was spent and suckled dry, like a nursing mother with a kit about to leave the teat. 

He knew that he was being bundled onto a horse, the gruff shoves that battered his subconscious mind perpetuated it, and his clumsy lips formed something akin to _Kelpie,_ the cogent part of his mind unwilling to leave her behind. 

Ciri loved that horse, it had been hers since she was a girl, Red couldn’t leave her to freeze to death on the mountainside. 

It was only when he felt a huff of familiar acrid breath on his hand and heard the gentle nicker of the mare, did he relax. 

They weren’t leaving her. 

That was _wondrous_ , he resolved in his foggy mind as the flames snapped at his bones, charring their very marrow and he swayed, only held aloft by the frantic touch of the bard who possessed his father’s face. The man who had cuckolded the true Count de Stael, the man who had given the Countess a living bastard. 

He was sure that they were speaking, perhaps about the storm brewing on the horizon, or the horse that they must have known belonged to Ciri, or the way his ruby-red blood left a delicious trail up the mountainside. 

But, regardless of their words or their relation to his plight, he was soon lost to them, slipping into the cooling veil of an endless sleep, with her name upon his lips. 

Anything was better than the pyre.

  
-X-

  
_“Æthelred!”_

The name fought itself free from her chest like an internal organ, some intrinsic part of her own viscera torn asunder, and the cry was powerful enough to leave her gasping and pulling from Vesemir’s grip like a thing possessed. She hadn’t been forced to swallow back her Elder Blood’s gift in such a way for years. 

Her surrogate grandfather had been trying to comfort her, in that silent way of his, in his gentle words and painfully soft instruction attempting to keeping her calm and keep her wits about her. But when she saw what had befallen her lover, she wasn’t to be stopped. Not when met with the sight of Kelpie’s loose reins dragging in the snow and the slumped figure of the boy she loved, held between her fathers, propped upright like a gray corpse. 

_No. It couldn’t be._

He couldn’t be. 

He had _promised_ her. 

She was running to meet them once they were in sight, tearing down the icy paths as soon as the stench of blood hit her nose, _his blood_ , spilling out into the snow. She could hear her Uncle Eskel’s familiar heavy footfalls running after her, heard him shout something to Uncle Lambert and Aidan as they spilled out of the keep. They didn't understand, she hadn't been so emotional or distraught in years... not since that night in her grandmother's chambers all those years ago, the blood soaking through her fingers.

Part of her, the dutiful part that had been trained to keep her feelings in check, ached to call back to everyone, to give them orders of what was needed to save Red’s life. 

She had loved him for years, long enough that it felt akin to a lifetime. She knew the proper way to lay him down to prevent painful bruises. She knew which of his joints constantly pained him. She knew how to stop the bleeding when it grew fierce and not even the cauterizing knife was enough to salvage the weeping flesh. She had held him through fevers that burned hotter than a forge and soothed him through joint swellings that made him lose himself in agony. She knew all the parts of her lover. He was so much more than the pretty guise he so often displayed. He was ill, in a way that she could never protect him from. But he was strong, far stronger than anyone gave him credit for. She vowed to always protect him from the sufferings that his body had no business sustaining. 

But the words never came, she only panted like a spooked horse, eyes stretched wide and terrified in a way that she could not disguise. 

_Oh Melitele, please no…_

She shouldn’t have sent him off alone. 

She should have protected him. 

She should have done _more_ , he deserved so much more. 

Red deserved the world, and had it been in her power to give, she would have razed it and deposited it in his keeping. 

And yet, she had _failed_ him. 

That damning thought alone was enough to nearly send her to her knees, but she had to reach his side, regardless of her feelings on the matter. 

Red’s visage was as cold and white as the snow flurries that whipped around them, his black curls tumbling free from their bindings like a splotch of color upon a desolate landscape. 

She wasted no time lifting him away from Roach and her fathers, who both looked at her with expressions that she had no desire to place. 

He was so light in her arms, his bones felt almost hollow like a baby bird’s and no more sturdy. Her eyes were teary and panicked as she surveyed the damage, swallowing hard against the bile that rose upon the sight of her lover’s delicate flesh rent and torn, the bite was oozing a fluid that she had no desire to name. His body was limp and no complaint was heard as she held him like a babe. A sob tore its way out from her throat at that, one that she could not stifle, as his head lolled lifelessly against her shoulder. His heart was rabbiting away in a light, off-kilter beat against her calloused palm. 

“Ciri, do you…?” Geralt’s words were rough, questioning, his golden eyes flicking down to the boy she held to her chest, as if he were the most precious thing in the world. 

_Know him?_

_Want him?_

_Love him?_

She met Geralt’s gaze with her jaw set tight and spoke with a voice that she hoped exuded far more confidence than she actually felt. Her heart was sitting somewhere around her knees. “Grab the pack with the stitched yellow sun off of Kelpie. We can still save him.” Her mare nickered, nosing as the limp form of her second master, looking at Ciri with eyes as if to say: _He’s yours, princess, you must help him._

_You must._

Ciri nearly recoiled at the rottenness of the necrophage bite on Red’s arm, the stench was incomparable, and she saw the enormous loss of blood in his pallid face.

She would have done anything to hear a little melody, a gentle tease, a laugh or even to see him smile. 

She would not let go of him, not without a fight, not with his heart still beating against her own. 

“Ciri….” Jaskier’s voice was so kind, so gentle and so full of pity that it nearly made her own split in two. She didn't hear his next words, as he didn’t voice them, but she knew they were there, hanging between them like a dark cloud. _You know as well as I, that he is going to die. It’s inevitable. The poison is spreading..._

_But, I will follow your lead._

“Please,” Was all she managed to choke out. “The _pack.”_

She forced herself to move through the snow and towards the keep, her only concern being the continuation of the jackrabbiting heart against her breast. Red wasn’t giving up on her yet, despite his loss of consciousness and uncharacteristic stillness, he was fighting with every sluggish beat of his heart. He wouldn’t let go until she gave him permission and no such words were ever liable to pass her lips. 

She could not lose him. 

Her heart would not bear it. 

For all she griped and groaned at him, for all he joked and teased, he was the light of her life and without him, her days in the world would be meaningless. 

She strode past all of them, not carrying if they followed or not, she needed to get him warm. 

Her bedchambers would do well enough. 

He was so frightfully still as she lay him against the pillows, his eyes shut and gossamer lashes brushing against his cheeks, as if a sleeping prince in a fairytale, one that a mere kiss would awaken. 

They filled into the room, one after another, her father thankfully carrying her pack. 

She had half a mind to wish for Yen, to desperately call out to her mother for aid, but she knew as well as Red did, that magic would not save him from this. It had never stilled his bleeding before. Her mother would only be there to watch Ciri’s emotional dissolution, it would be painful and unfair. So she didn't. 

“Ciri, you needed this?”

The pack. 

She grabbed it with trembling fingers and began foraging around inside of it, looking for the vial and the basilisk horn. 

“Who the hell is _he?”_

Her Uncle Lambert’s voice was low, gruff and but his eyes never left the still form of Ciri’s lover. 

“He helped us on the Path up the mountain, acted as a distraction against some necrophages.” Her father grunted, his eyes never leaving Ciri's, as if he was beginning to understand. “He was good with a bow.”

She stiffened, just as her fingers closed around the vial and horn. 

“A _distraction?”_ Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to fucking _kill him!_ I gave him one task! One bloody task and it’s to stay safe and out of harm's way! And what does he go and do?! _This!”_

She was crying, and she didn’t realize it until Vesemir wrapped a large, warm hand around her bicep. 

“Do you have any white honey?” 

His voice spurned her from her spiral and she dug another hand inside the pack to liberate it. “He’s _human,_ Vesemir. He can’t…”

“Not much, and it could harm him, but it may save his life, Cirilla.”

She swallowed, using the back of one hand to scrub at her eyes, then she set her jaw and went to work. 

“First, we have to stop the bleeding.”

She used her bottom canine to pop the top off the vial of black adder venom she held, dipping the hollowed horn inside and letting the venom fill it before she clamped her thumb on the other end to keep the fluid in place. Then without preamble, she hooked it into one of the larger veins in Red’s thigh, releasing the venom with it. It was far from the first time that she had done such a ministration and yet, she had never held her breath during it before. 

“What was that?” Jaskier’s eyes were huge as she wiggled the horn free. He looked a bit green at the sight and she couldn’t blame him.

“Snake venom, it’ll force his blood to clot and stop the bleeding. The white honey will neutralize it, but it needs to reach his heart first.”

“His blood doesn’t clot?” Eskel surveyed the boy on the bed, who had still yet to make a sound. 

“No, he’s a bleeder.” And she couldn’t bring herself to say any more than that.

_He should have died in childhood._

_He leapt out of a tower into my arms once._

_He threw himself into mortal peril so I would come save him, thirteen times over._

_I love him._

_I love him so much that I might die with the pain of it._

_Why didn't you warn me of this?  
_

She reached out to brush one errant curl away from his icy forehead, her fingers lingering far longer than they ought. 

_Oh please Red, just open up your eyes._

She could almost already see his reaction to her concern, his rolling eyes, his smirk. She could hear his teasing lilt, _‘Oh dear, my daring witchress, shall I fetch you a lavender handkerchief to blot your tears as a token of my gratitude?’_

She would have given every coin that she had ever earned, every breath in her chest and every beat of her heart, to only have him open his eyes once more or make the slightest sound.

Finally, when she had no other choice, she took a swig of the second vial. 

Her lips stung as she parted his own, releasing a mouthful of white honey and letting it slip innocuously down his throat. 

She prayed it would be enough. 

_Oh, sweet Melitele help me, I can’t lose him…_

She touched his icy cheek, he was so beautiful, even as he lay still and silent, his curls as black as a raven’s wing spread across her pillows, lips as red as his own spilt blood, and his skin as white as the snow that fell outside. 

Her fingers came away damp with tears. 

He was not to leave her yet.

As, hidden beneath his tunic, his heart still beat out a war song.

-X-


End file.
